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You're giving aliens a human mind, I can't see how you could predict alien's reaction. Also if they're able to send such a weapon, I hope for them they have something to deflect it. On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 00:46 Thorakh wrote:
I have a hard time believing a warlike species is capable of reaching that level of technology before they destroy themselves. Just look at Earth, we're nowhere near any kind of advanced space technology, why? Because we're too busy killing ourselves and our planet. ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war? evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate. Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate.
That's wrong, it may seems that way tho.
Look at China. Or maybe Brazil.
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On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate.
I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis.
Competition doesn't support development, it only supports:
Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics).
Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances.
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The scariest thought for me about aliens is that their method of existence in and their perception of the universe would be so different from ours that any form of communication would be impossible, and the aliens themselves would be unimaginably different from humans, as humans always make the assumption any other civilization that exists MUST think and exist in a way similar to humans. (have you ever seen an alien depicted or theorized that did not bear even the tiniest bit of resemblance to humans? You never will, we cannot imagine something we cannot comprehend)
Even OP makes that assumption, and bases his entire post on the assumption that aliens will even develop similar technology, and need to obey the same patterns that shaped the Earth and its people.
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On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances.
symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise.
epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words.
as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict.
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I have recently been to a good lecture by a frustrated would-be exobiologist (actually works as a cosmologist due to funding). He went through a big formula, along with uncertainties, based on a very famous scientist's work (Frank Drake).
Basically, considering the percentage of habitable planets in our vicinity, and the small communicative period in which civilisations exist (we, for example, will only have strong radio wave emissions for a total of about 100 years), the chance of communicating with aliens is extremely small, in humanity's lifetime. More worrying is that, even if we did communicate, is the potential for 50-year-each-way communications, which will never work out.
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/math/4/a/c/4ac1a1c3e0f903e8ed70359a4bb99466.png)
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.[
As you can see, even with very optimistic values, N is tiny. On a universal scale, however, it's almost inevitable, just we won't be communicating with them.
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On January 07 2012 01:19 FranzP wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 01:10 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 00:37 FranzP wrote:On January 07 2012 00:27 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 06 2012 15:55 Selendis wrote:On January 06 2012 15:46 EtherealDeath wrote:On January 06 2012 15:15 Selendis wrote:
Very interesting read.
A few points I would like to make though:
-RKV's are expensive to make, why make them when you can just remain silent? Other civs have buckley's chance of detecting you unless you respond, so just stay quiet and you are completely safe!
-RKV's aren't completely undetectable. The faster and/or heavier they are, the easier they are to detect from relativistic effects.
-And over such large distances we would have plenty of time to intercept the "missile", A lot of time, in fact, millions of years at the very least to prepare from when we first detect it from gravitational lensing.
-As far as I know we are completely undected by the rest of the univers because, as others in this thread have pointed out, our electromagnetic transmissions dissipate into background noise within 50 light years. Even if we wanted to be detected we would have to go to great lengths to make that happen
So yeah I think any other civilizations out there probably wouldn't bother with RKV's, although they would stay quiet just as a precaution. Small asteroids are quite difficult to detect... Not when they are travelling at 0.5c! How would that change things? EDIT: I'm not a physics expert, I'm sincerely curious When a mass travels at relativistic speed (I think 0,1c to c is considered relativistic speed), it curves spacetime. This is easier to detect than the object itself. Could you determine the trajectory and source of an object using this technique? I don't know. I'm not an expert in general relativity either :D . I'm interested but not an expert.
Ok, so I did a master thesis on super-gravity, and I have to admit I don't really understand what you are referring to. 
- Everything massive bend spacetime. the heavier it is, the more it bends.
- Something that moves get more energy, but the rest mass does not change. I am honestly not sure if the extra kinetic energy bends the space more or not. Don't remember...  What I do know is that 0.5c only gives 15% more mass, 0.9c roughly doubles the mass and 0.99c give around 7 times the rest mass. So it is not a huge difference. it's not like an asteroid will start bending space like a star at 0.99c.
- current earth technology can only see veeery heavy stuff through gravitational lensing. Who knows what other more advanced civilizations can see.
All in all, it is very hard to say at what distance a high tech civ can first detect an incoming (cloaked) spaceship/asteroid at 0.5c. With the assumption that faster-than-light will not appear, a faster object will give you less and less head warning. example:
you detect a 0.5c projectile at 1 light year distance. When the light from 1 light year away arrives at your planet, the projectile will have travel 0.5 light years, so when you receive the information from 1 light year away, the projectile will already be at 0.5 light year distance. thus you will get 1 year head warning.
you detect a 0.9 projectile at 1 light year distance. at arrival of inforamtion frmo 1 light year, the projectile will be at 0.1 light year distance, and you will only get 0.1 years/0.9 = 0.111 years, which is a bit less than 6 weeks.
a 0.99c projectile detected at 1 light year distance will give you just below 4 days head warning.
However, light speed projectiles, essentially very powerful light beams (probably lasers), are impossible to detect ahead of arrival, as any information from it would travel at the same speed, or slower, than the beam.
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Any species capable of inter-galaxy space travel will be so advanced that all they see when they meet us is ants or bacteria on a rock.
How do you communicate with an ant or a bacteria?
Let's say there is a 1 billion year old species out there that is dominant in our galaxy. Just think how much technological advancements we have done in the last 100 years. Things we have done include first steps of space travel, a planetary wide communication network where any person can soon contact any person withing few seconds, scientists are already working on making things invisible, sound-based weaponry already exists, nuclear weapons, we cure diseases with genetic modification (or try to), cloning attempts have been done with variying success..
We did that in last 100 years or so. Now think what a species can do in 1 billion years. So yeah, if that species is dominant then we are just ants on a rock compared to them.
Why is the universe so silent? Because we can't comprehend it well enough to be part of it.
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Can someone post that meme with "ancient aliens" ?
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I'm pretty sure there are easier ways to kill humanz than throwing rocks at them. 
More seriously though, I would think that aiming that relativistic rock is far more difficult than creating one.
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Could you not set up a communication beacon a decent distance away from your home planet (like 25 LY away)? Therefore you can communicate peaceful intent without actually giving away your exact co-ordinates?
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On January 07 2012 02:33 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 01:19 FranzP wrote:On January 07 2012 01:10 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 00:37 FranzP wrote:On January 07 2012 00:27 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 06 2012 15:55 Selendis wrote:On January 06 2012 15:46 EtherealDeath wrote:On January 06 2012 15:15 Selendis wrote:
Very interesting read.
A few points I would like to make though:
-RKV's are expensive to make, why make them when you can just remain silent? Other civs have buckley's chance of detecting you unless you respond, so just stay quiet and you are completely safe!
-RKV's aren't completely undetectable. The faster and/or heavier they are, the easier they are to detect from relativistic effects.
-And over such large distances we would have plenty of time to intercept the "missile", A lot of time, in fact, millions of years at the very least to prepare from when we first detect it from gravitational lensing.
-As far as I know we are completely undected by the rest of the univers because, as others in this thread have pointed out, our electromagnetic transmissions dissipate into background noise within 50 light years. Even if we wanted to be detected we would have to go to great lengths to make that happen
So yeah I think any other civilizations out there probably wouldn't bother with RKV's, although they would stay quiet just as a precaution. Small asteroids are quite difficult to detect... Not when they are travelling at 0.5c! How would that change things? EDIT: I'm not a physics expert, I'm sincerely curious When a mass travels at relativistic speed (I think 0,1c to c is considered relativistic speed), it curves spacetime. This is easier to detect than the object itself. Could you determine the trajectory and source of an object using this technique? I don't know. I'm not an expert in general relativity either :D . I'm interested but not an expert. Ok, so I did a master thesis on super-gravity, and I have to admit I don't really understand what you are referring to. - Everything massive bend spacetime. the heavier it is, the more it bends. - Something that moves get more energy, but the rest mass does not change. I am honestly not sure if the extra kinetic energy bends the space more or not. Don't remember... What I do know is that 0.5c only gives 15% more mass, 0.9c roughly doubles the mass and 0.99c give around 7 times the rest mass. So it is not a huge difference. it's not like an asteroid will start bending space like a star at 0.99c. - current earth technology can only see veeery heavy stuff through gravitational lensing. Who knows what other more advanced civilizations can see. All in all, it is very hard to say at what distance a high tech civ can first detect an incoming (cloaked) spaceship/asteroid at 0.5c. With the assumption that faster-than-light will not appear, a faster object will give you less and less head warning. example: you detect a 0.5c projectile at 1 light year distance. When the light from 1 light year away arrives at your planet, the projectile will have travel 0.5 light years, so when you receive the information from 1 light year away, the projectile will already be at 0.5 light year distance. thus you will get 1 year head warning. you detect a 0.9 projectile at 1 light year distance. at arrival of inforamtion frmo 1 light year, the projectile will be at 0.1 light year distance, and you will only get 0.1 years/0.9 = 0.111 years, which is a bit less than 6 weeks. a 0.99c projectile detected at 1 light year distance will give you just below 4 days head warning. However, light speed projectiles, essentially very powerful light beams (probably lasers), are impossible to detect ahead of arrival, as any information from it would travel at the same speed, or slower, than the beam.
Do you know if it would be possible to detect the gravitational waves created by an rkv? Granted its mass would be small, but at relativistic speeds may be a noticiable effect. Also, how much would an rkv slow down due to the grav. wave emision?
EDIT: well I asked a friend who is has a Phd on gravitation, he tells me that relativistic objects on a uniform linear movent don't emit grav. waves. Only during the acceleration process would be noticible grav. effects,which would dilute with the square of the distance.
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On January 07 2012 03:18 HallBregg wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 02:33 Cascade wrote:On January 07 2012 01:19 FranzP wrote:On January 07 2012 01:10 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 00:37 FranzP wrote:On January 07 2012 00:27 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 06 2012 15:55 Selendis wrote:On January 06 2012 15:46 EtherealDeath wrote:On January 06 2012 15:15 Selendis wrote:
Very interesting read.
A few points I would like to make though:
-RKV's are expensive to make, why make them when you can just remain silent? Other civs have buckley's chance of detecting you unless you respond, so just stay quiet and you are completely safe!
-RKV's aren't completely undetectable. The faster and/or heavier they are, the easier they are to detect from relativistic effects.
-And over such large distances we would have plenty of time to intercept the "missile", A lot of time, in fact, millions of years at the very least to prepare from when we first detect it from gravitational lensing.
-As far as I know we are completely undected by the rest of the univers because, as others in this thread have pointed out, our electromagnetic transmissions dissipate into background noise within 50 light years. Even if we wanted to be detected we would have to go to great lengths to make that happen
So yeah I think any other civilizations out there probably wouldn't bother with RKV's, although they would stay quiet just as a precaution. Small asteroids are quite difficult to detect... Not when they are travelling at 0.5c! How would that change things? EDIT: I'm not a physics expert, I'm sincerely curious When a mass travels at relativistic speed (I think 0,1c to c is considered relativistic speed), it curves spacetime. This is easier to detect than the object itself. Could you determine the trajectory and source of an object using this technique? I don't know. I'm not an expert in general relativity either :D . I'm interested but not an expert. Ok, so I did a master thesis on super-gravity, and I have to admit I don't really understand what you are referring to. - Everything massive bend spacetime. the heavier it is, the more it bends. - Something that moves get more energy, but the rest mass does not change. I am honestly not sure if the extra kinetic energy bends the space more or not. Don't remember... What I do know is that 0.5c only gives 15% more mass, 0.9c roughly doubles the mass and 0.99c give around 7 times the rest mass. So it is not a huge difference. it's not like an asteroid will start bending space like a star at 0.99c. - current earth technology can only see veeery heavy stuff through gravitational lensing. Who knows what other more advanced civilizations can see. All in all, it is very hard to say at what distance a high tech civ can first detect an incoming (cloaked) spaceship/asteroid at 0.5c. With the assumption that faster-than-light will not appear, a faster object will give you less and less head warning. example: you detect a 0.5c projectile at 1 light year distance. When the light from 1 light year away arrives at your planet, the projectile will have travel 0.5 light years, so when you receive the information from 1 light year away, the projectile will already be at 0.5 light year distance. thus you will get 1 year head warning. you detect a 0.9 projectile at 1 light year distance. at arrival of inforamtion frmo 1 light year, the projectile will be at 0.1 light year distance, and you will only get 0.1 years/0.9 = 0.111 years, which is a bit less than 6 weeks. a 0.99c projectile detected at 1 light year distance will give you just below 4 days head warning. However, light speed projectiles, essentially very powerful light beams (probably lasers), are impossible to detect ahead of arrival, as any information from it would travel at the same speed, or slower, than the beam. Do you know if it would be possible to detect the gravitational waves created by an rkv? Granted its mass would be small, but at relativistic speeds may be a noticiable effect. Also, how much would an rkv slow down due to the grav. wave emision?
gravitational waves are only emitted by accelerating objects. Once the projectile reaches target speed it will not emit gravitational waves.
This is a typical property of relativity, as there actually is no objective way to say if the projectile is moving fast or not. it may be moving fast if you sit still at the target planet an look at it, but sitting on the projectile it is the target moving quickly, and the projectile at rest, and you could argue that it should be the target planet that should emit. Acceleration breaks this symmetry as it is only the accelerating object that will feel the g-forces.
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On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict.
Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point).
People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another.
War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction).
Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely).
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I agree with the ''kill everything, ask questions later''. And i also agree that we would be pretty much screwed if inteligent life made contact, however, i doubt that aliens would use something like a RKV.
For what purpose aliens would want us extinct? Probably because they have taken an interest in the planet, and a weapon that kills the entire human race(and destroys the planet in the process) is not quite effective. If we assume they are so technological advanced that they can recover Earth after the blast, then why would they be here in the first place? There's plenty of planets in the universe that they can recover, so thats out of the question.
What would probably happen is invasion, think Independece day/war of the worlds, but worse.
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Best. Thread. Ever. Sorry, but everything else i would like to say has already been mentioned :/
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On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot a space dick at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching a space dick is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely).
bro you associated my post with me agreeing with the op
if you read the posts i make in this thread you will very clearly understand what is going on
like my first post in this thread where i make exactly the same argument you do because this entire thread is one of the stupidest thing ever written
also, i don't remember mentioning space dicks in this post, so i have no idea why you're bringing them up
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On January 07 2012 03:39 DDie wrote:
I agree with the ''kill everything, ask questions later''. And i also agree that we would be pretty much screwed if inteligent life made contact, however, i doubt that aliens would use something like a RKV.
For what purpose aliens would want us extinct? Probably because they have taken an interest in the planet, and a weapon that kills the entire human race(and destroys the planet in the process) is not quite effective. If we assume they are so technological advanced that they can recover Earth after the blast, then why would they be here in the first place? There's plenty of planets in the universe that they can recover, so thats out of the question.
What would probably happen is invasion, think Independece day/war of the worlds, but worse.
If aliens wanted us extinct but wanted the planet "habitable" they could just send out von Neumann probes armed with nanite replicators to morph our biosphere into a biosphere similar to their home planet.
That would solve both the problem of getting rid of us and also terraforming the planet.
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On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely).
But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways.
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Reading too much sci-fi is bad for you.
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On January 07 2012 05:58 Kukaracha wrote:
Reading too much sci-fi is bad for you.
No it's not. Reading politics though...
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EPT
